Scripture Engagement

The prosperity gospel is widely practised throughout the world, and hugely popular in Africa. It has also gained a foothold in Europe via certain modern movements that emphasise the 'health' aspect of 'health and wealth' teaching i.e. the idea that God doesn't want anyone to suffer, but for all to be healed. We are probably all familiar with TV evangelists who ask us to give, and God will reward us by giving back. The proof that it works is the large house they themselves live in, and the executive car they drive. The trouble with this teaching is that it does not line up with the overall message of Scripture. The so-called proof texts used by prosperity teachers are often taken from the Old Testament (nothing in and of itself bad about that), turning descriptive teaching (a description of what God did then) into prescriptive ideas (God wants that to happen to everybody). "God made Abraham prosperous. He wants to make us prosperous too!" Now, there are a l...

 And now for something completely different - a testimony!  Why did I join the Bible translation movement? I often get asked this question, and it's a good one. Of course, it was a matter of calling. But how did that calling manifest itself? It's a long story... Back in the 1980s we already knew that God had called us into mission work, but we didn't know what type of mission work he'd called us too. In my final year at university I visited Crosslinks in London, but they told me to go and get a secular job, and establish my profession, then I'd be able to use that in mission work. We got married, settled down, and became school teachers. But we were still exploring opportunities for mission - in fact we lived in a highly multicultural city, attending a church in the inner-city area where there were a mix of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. This enabled us to continue friendship making amongst those of other faiths, whilst attending the church and building rela...

Unusually, a theological topic. How are we to understand Jesus in the light of the Old Testament covenants? I've been helped on this topic by Alistair McKitterick who has been teaching at Moorlands College and is now off to the London School of Theology. Obviously his understanding of this topic is better than mine, so I'm giving him fair credit for much of what follows. Having said which, he might not agree with everything I write below. Most of us are fairly familiar with the covenants in the Bible, which are with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah and found in the New Testament. The background to these is suzerain-vassal treaties between kings and their people, or between a more important and less important king in the ancient near east. The most important of these covenants, from a NT perspective, are the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, but I will include the Mosaic covenant too: Abrahamic - the promise of land and descendants (Ge...